Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired un Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by first Light. I'm her host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about going where
Speaker 2: you really don't care about deer so that you can
Speaker 2: learn all about deer. This is a weird one and
Speaker 2: you might think it's I don't know, maybe not the
Speaker 2: best advice for how to learn deer, but I think
Speaker 2: it's pretty good. So what am I going to talk about, Well,
Speaker 2: going into the woods and not looking for deer specifically.
Speaker 2: The more I go look for other things and other
Speaker 2: critters and find other reasons to be out there, the
Speaker 2: more I pick up on deer hunting movements and how
Speaker 2: they use the lance gape. That's the basis for this
Speaker 2: whole show, so buckle up. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: sayings about being books smart versus being street smart, and
Speaker 2: I love all of them mostly, and I'm not proud
Speaker 2: of this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because my
Speaker 2: wife is very BookSmart. I, on the other hand, am not.
Speaker 2: I doubt you'd say I'm very street smart either, But
Speaker 2: that's beside the point. The truth is there is a
Speaker 2: lot you can learn from books and from consuming content.
Speaker 2: I hope that's true anyway, because otherwise my professional career
Speaker 2: has mostly been a sham, which, come to think of it,
Speaker 2: might be true. The reality, though, is that there are
Speaker 2: academic pursuits and then there's experience. Academics are great for
Speaker 2: giving you facts and the processes upon which you might
Speaker 2: learn some facts. It teaches your mind to work out problems,
Speaker 2: or at least parts of problems, and that's important. Still
Speaker 2: largely be about this, Maybe it still is. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't been there in a while. It wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: to directly prepare you for a career in a certain field,
Speaker 2: although that was and is a component of higher education.
Speaker 2: But the heart of it was to teach us, like
Speaker 2: how to think, how to think better. Maybe, and it
Speaker 2: works too, but using your brain can only take you
Speaker 2: so far. You also have to engage with tasks and
Speaker 2: problems and sort them out in real time. And in person.
Speaker 2: Let me give you an example from a recent conversation
Speaker 2: I had with a woman who was trying real hard
Speaker 2: to kill a buck on public land. Her dilemma is this,
Speaker 2: she found a concentration of sign on a chunk of
Speaker 2: ground in Kansas, where she lives. The concentration is accessible
Speaker 2: from two different parking areas. Both require a walk of
Speaker 2: about a mile, and one takes her low through a
Speaker 2: thick river bottom and the other takes her high up
Speaker 2: on a ridgetop. She maintains that both the ridgetop and
Speaker 2: the creek bottom have deer in them, so getting in
Speaker 2: is almost impossible without spooking deer. That to her is
Speaker 2: a major problem, a problem she was looking for an
Speaker 2: academic solution to which doesn't exist. You can't really outthink
Speaker 2: a problem like that, You just can't. You kind of
Speaker 2: just got to go into the creek bottom hunt see
Speaker 2: what happens. Or you have to go on the ridgetop hunt,
Speaker 2: see what happens. Then you have to figure out what
Speaker 2: went wrong and experiment to see if you can solve
Speaker 2: for the problems or not. Does that sound a little
Speaker 2: too simple, Because hunting is simple, my friends, But simple
Speaker 2: doesn't always mean easy. In fact, it often doesn't, and
Speaker 2: that kind of sucks. Look at this another way. Do
Speaker 2: you want to look better naked? Of course you do.
Speaker 2: And while I understand that was an extremely creepy way
Speaker 2: to frame this point up, I used it. And that's
Speaker 2: that if you want to look better naked, you need
Speaker 2: to exercise more and eat fewer bowls of ice cream,
Speaker 2: size a lot and eat kind of shitty, or you
Speaker 2: can exercise a little and eat really clean, or some
Speaker 2: version of both. But the truth is that putting on
Speaker 2: muscle and losing weight tends to solve the problem of
Speaker 2: looking good in your birthday suit. But that's not easy.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's real hard. You won't suddenly find yourself
Speaker 2: looking fine by reading a book. You'll get there by
Speaker 2: exercising and eating a certain way and figuring out how
Speaker 2: to keep yourself moving in the right direction even when
Speaker 2: you don't want to. You want to kill a Kansas
Speaker 2: book on public land, it's simple, go find some sign
Speaker 2: and hunt it. But of course you have the question
Speaker 2: of access, and the question of hunting pressure, and the
Speaker 2: question of your own time and how much of it
Speaker 2: you have, and the question of what direction the wind's
Speaker 2: going to be blowing on the morning you can hunt,
Speaker 2: and the temperature, and on and on and on and on. Academically,
Speaker 2: this stuff's pretty easy. But you won't know what those
Speaker 2: ridgetop deer are really going to do until you hunt
Speaker 2: it and figure it out in person. Do you know
Speaker 2: where the real problem in all this lies? We love
Speaker 2: leaning towards the academic side of things. It's easier to
Speaker 2: watch a YouTube video on scouting than it is to
Speaker 2: go scout. It's easier to read an article on how
Speaker 2: to kill a mature buck in the cattails than it
Speaker 2: is to go find one living in the cattails and
Speaker 2: then hunt him until you kill him. It's easier to
Speaker 2: write off a concentration of deer on a chunk of
Speaker 2: public land in Kansas because you just know you'll bust
Speaker 2: them going in than it is to go in on
Speaker 2: one of your precious hunting days for a trial and
Speaker 2: error morning or evening sit. But what's better for you
Speaker 2: as a hunter? We all know the answer, just like
Speaker 2: we know what too much ice cream and couch time
Speaker 2: does to us physically. Look, it sucks, but it's true.
Speaker 2: So how do you engage in this simple concept that
Speaker 2: it's hard? To implement so that you can be a
Speaker 2: stone cold deer killer, whether you're trying to figure things
Speaker 2: out in Kansas or South Carolina or Pennsylvania or wherever
Speaker 2: we find the discipline to do it. Or you trick yourself.
Speaker 2: I mean that I trick myself all the time. I
Speaker 2: don't want to go too deep into this because I'm
Speaker 2: a squirrel writer and not a psychologist. But one of
Speaker 2: the things people ask me fairly often is how I
Speaker 2: run so much without wanting to kill myself. The jokes
Speaker 2: on them, though, because running is actually what keeps the
Speaker 2: bad thoughts at bay, and it's amazing for that task.
Speaker 2: But it's also not about wanting to run. I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that. I dread it every time, just
Speaker 2: as I like it when I'm done every time. But
Speaker 2: I have to get myself to do it. So I
Speaker 2: set a goal and I tell anyone and everyone I
Speaker 2: can about that goal. That holds me a little accountable
Speaker 2: with my circle of friends and family who really don't
Speaker 2: want to hear about my running, just like my podcast audience.
Speaker 2: But the main reason is that a yearly mile goal
Speaker 2: is weirdly important to me. I hate not hitting it,
Speaker 2: so it keeps me honest with myself, even though I'm
Speaker 2: just playing a trick on myself. The minute that one
Speaker 2: goal ends for the year, which this year is running
Speaker 2: eight hundred miles, I'll set a new goal for the
Speaker 2: new year. It gives me great pleasure to meet that goal,
Speaker 2: even though I know the task of running isn't going
Speaker 2: to end for me. It's not even really going to
Speaker 2: change when I meet it. I just have to have
Speaker 2: it otherwise I won't run as much as I should.
Speaker 2: When it comes to deer hunting, we all know we
Speaker 2: should scout more. We really should, but it's also very
Speaker 2: easy to not scout as much as we should because
Speaker 2: to most of us, scouting isn't as fun as hunting
Speaker 2: or about ten thousand other things we could do. So
Speaker 2: we fill in the blanks with trail cameras and we
Speaker 2: consume content, or we hang out with our hunting buddies
Speaker 2: just to talk about deer hunting whatever. But we need
Speaker 2: experience out there, and that is a never ending journey.
Speaker 2: Just like getting in shape. You can have the goal
Speaker 2: of getting to your high school weight or benching two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pounds or running a half marathon. That's
Speaker 2: all great, but the minute you hit your goal, you
Speaker 2: better figure out another one, or it's more likely that
Speaker 2: you're just borrowing that accomplishment. Yeah you did it, that's great,
Speaker 2: but if you go back to not doing anything, it's
Speaker 2: kind of a hollow victory. With hunting, the way that
Speaker 2: I trick myself into learning about deer is to find
Speaker 2: as many reasons as possible to be out there. Some
Speaker 2: of them are easy. You all know that I absolutely
Speaker 2: love pheasant hunting, and as I record this podcast, I
Speaker 2: have a young lab sleeping next to me who has
Speaker 2: no skin left on her lips, or most of her nose,
Speaker 2: or parts of her cheeks and around her eyes. The
Speaker 2: cattails have literally worn her face off and she loves it,
Speaker 2: and so do I. I don't need an excuse to pheasant hunt,
Speaker 2: and many many times each season I'll drive seven hours
Speaker 2: round trip in a single day to hunt for a
Speaker 2: couple of roosters. I love it for many reasons, but
Speaker 2: one side benefit to it is I learn a ton
Speaker 2: about deer when I follow a black lab around where
Speaker 2: the roosters like to hang out. Recently, I filmed a
Speaker 2: pheasant show on a few different parcels of public land
Speaker 2: in western Minnesota, and on one of those days it
Speaker 2: was very windy, like twenty to thirty mile per hour
Speaker 2: winds all day long. That meant that the roosters were
Speaker 2: cagy as hell, and if they got up into that
Speaker 2: wind and I wasn't ready, they were also pretty safe
Speaker 2: because those are birds I will shoot behind, mostly, particularly
Speaker 2: if they make the good decision to swing to my right.
Speaker 2: But that wind did something else. When you're filming a
Speaker 2: show like that, you're always looking for moments to talk
Speaker 2: to the camera, to drop some sweet knowledge or just
Speaker 2: explain what's going on. On a day when the wind
Speaker 2: is just ripping across the landscape, you don't want to
Speaker 2: just stop anywhere to talk because the sound of it
Speaker 2: will go right into your microphone and ruin your talking points.
Speaker 2: So as we followed Sadie through the cattails, I found
Speaker 2: myself naturally stopping when we would hit a spot that
Speaker 2: was out of the wind. The thing about this is
Speaker 2: in that country, which is super flat and doesn't have
Speaker 2: very many trees, there are a lot of spots that
Speaker 2: are not out of the wind. It's rare to suddenly
Speaker 2: realize you're standing in a little zone that's very calm.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many times I stopped in a
Speaker 2: spot like that and started to talk to the camera,
Speaker 2: only to notice that Sadie was real birdie and that
Speaker 2: I better get ready, or that we jump deer bedded
Speaker 2: right next to us. It happened multiple times in one day. Now,
Speaker 2: of course they want to lay up in a spot
Speaker 2: that's calm, but why Well, for starters, it's more comfortable,
Speaker 2: it's warmer, that's a no brainer. But what else, Well,
Speaker 2: if you betted down just about anywhere in a dry
Speaker 2: cattail slew that's getting pounded by the wind, the noise
Speaker 2: factor is going to be very high. Sure you have
Speaker 2: the wind to use to your advantage, but you lose
Speaker 2: the hearing advantage. Now, why would you do that when
Speaker 2: you could hole up somewhere that would keep you warm
Speaker 2: and you could not only smell approaching danger, but have
Speaker 2: a better chance to hear it. If you were a
Speaker 2: prey animal like say, I don't know, a deer or
Speaker 2: a pheasant, hearing that danger and keeping track of it
Speaker 2: and the thick stuff is important, could literally save your life.
Speaker 2: With deer, that allows them the chance to know exactly
Speaker 2: where the danger is and whether they can sit tight
Speaker 2: and let it pass, or they need to get the
Speaker 2: hell out of dodge. That is a huge, huge advantage
Speaker 2: for them. Now what good does that do anyone as
Speaker 2: a hunter? Well, if I lived around those cat tail
Speaker 2: sleus and was planning on deer hunting the next day,
Speaker 2: but the forecast called for ripping winds, I could do
Speaker 2: one of two things. I could not hunt because it's
Speaker 2: too windy and I think my chances are low. Or
Speaker 2: I could beat them to a spot I know they
Speaker 2: should be out of the wind, or at least where
Speaker 2: they should be going. Maybe this example is a bridge
Speaker 2: too far for your per It's all hunting specifics, that's
Speaker 2: fair enough. I've talked about this before, but I think
Speaker 2: it's worth mentioning there are other reasons to be out there.
Speaker 2: Rabbit hunting puts me on more deer betting and staging
Speaker 2: areas than any kind of hunting I do, even sometimes
Speaker 2: deer hunting. The good thing about this is that rabbit
Speaker 2: hunting is fun to begin with. But where rabbits take
Speaker 2: you is to the spots deer like to go when
Speaker 2: they don't want to be found. And even more than
Speaker 2: that is rabbit hunting takes you to the spots where
Speaker 2: bucks tend to go where they don't want to be found.
Speaker 2: A day spent pushing fence lines and homesteads and brush
Speaker 2: piles and whatever else is a day that is going
Speaker 2: to be fun but also teach you a lot about deer.
Speaker 2: Squirrel hunting does that too, but it won't take you
Speaker 2: to the betting areas and often the staging areas quite
Speaker 2: like rabbit hunting will do. But it'll take you to
Speaker 2: the ridges where deer feet in october under oak trees.
Speaker 2: It'll take you into the valley you think you can't
Speaker 2: hunt because the wind will be swirling too much, and
Speaker 2: it'll show you all the rubs and deer sign in
Speaker 2: that unhuntable spot and maybe chuck. Maybe while you're toting
Speaker 2: a seventeen or a twenty two around there, you'll realize
Speaker 2: you're standing right in a spot where the wind is
Speaker 2: actually predictable and favorable, even in that valley you thought
Speaker 2: you couldn't hunt. I know a lot of you are
Speaker 2: listening to this and going, yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: go brush busting for bunnies on my deer leaves. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to push the deer out fair enough, go
Speaker 2: bunny hunting somewhere else then, or go in February if
Speaker 2: the season's still open. You don't want to shoot some
Speaker 2: squirrels for the crockpot right now in the place you
Speaker 2: deer hunt, then go somewhere else. Find a spot to
Speaker 2: go where you don't care about the deer. You'll see
Speaker 2: how they use the landscape there too. If it's public,
Speaker 2: you might just find something in a spot you never
Speaker 2: intended a deer hunt, because you're out there looking around
Speaker 2: for something that is not a deer. People often ask
Speaker 2: me how I find so many random public land places
Speaker 2: to hunt, and the answer is often that I just
Speaker 2: like to do lots of stuff. I like to hunt
Speaker 2: a lot of different critters. I also just like to
Speaker 2: walk through the woods, and often I like to walk
Speaker 2: through the woods and just look for deer. I grew
Speaker 2: up doing this, and I had a conversation with Zach
Speaker 2: Ferrenbau the hunting public about it not too long ago.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't remember if we had this conversation on
Speaker 2: a podcast or if it was just a personal phone call,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter. We got on this topic of
Speaker 2: finding deer and he said that he goes into the
Speaker 2: woods just to look for them all year long. While
Speaker 2: I was growing up, that was one of my favorite
Speaker 2: things to do, and I still find myself going into
Speaker 2: some of the parks around my house and doing the
Speaker 2: exact same thing, even though I'll never hunt those deer.
Speaker 2: It's just fun to slip up to the edge of
Speaker 2: a CRP field half an hour before dark and try
Speaker 2: to spot one, just as it's fun to get off
Speaker 2: of the normal trails and see where the deer travel
Speaker 2: and where the bucks leave their sign. This kind of
Speaker 2: thing fills your database with useful info, you information that
Speaker 2: stretches way beyond only the places we hunt, because, as
Speaker 2: I've said before, you might think you have the whole
Speaker 2: white world where you want it with your hunting ground,
Speaker 2: but ownership changes, permission can slip away. That secret honey
Speaker 2: hole of public land you've found might suddenly show up
Speaker 2: on everyone's radar. Counting on a property to always be
Speaker 2: there is a bad idea, even if you own it,
Speaker 2: because the neighbors can turn over, or CWD can pop up,
Speaker 2: and the sharpshooters can suddenly knock down the herd or whatever.
Speaker 2: Things change. Going out and wandering around, whether you're looking
Speaker 2: for a rooster or a bunny, or just a little
Speaker 2: quiet time out of the house because you have a
Speaker 2: wife and two thirteen year old daughters. It's good for
Speaker 2: the soul and it's good for your hunting skills. You
Speaker 2: get to find sign and analyze it in a low
Speaker 2: pressure situation, or really a no pressure situation. You get
Speaker 2: to jump deer and figure out why they were there.
Speaker 2: Maybe you get to watch a few filter through the
Speaker 2: woods or hop over a fence, or maybe you find
Speaker 2: a couple of dead heads in the overgrown creek bottom
Speaker 2: and four years down the road you shoot one in
Speaker 2: the guts and you're having an al of a time
Speaker 2: finding him. So you pull up on X and you
Speaker 2: take a look around and you think, hmm, maybe he
Speaker 2: made it all the way to the river and I
Speaker 2: should go walk it, and you find him. The focus
Speaker 2: on hunting content is often about how you can develop
Speaker 2: your skills on a very specific piece of ground, But
Speaker 2: developing your skills so they transcend specific spots is so
Speaker 2: much better. Just as it's better to be book smart
Speaker 2: and street smart. To have the academic side of the
Speaker 2: hunting thing locked down is great, but you really want
Speaker 2: to take it somewhere you need that experience. It's easy
Speaker 2: to do on paper, but hard to do in real life.
Speaker 2: So figure out a reason. Trick yourself into a bunny
Speaker 2: hunt with the buddies. Take a twenty two out for
Speaker 2: a long walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Try to
Speaker 2: sneak up on a few squirrels. Go to the park
Speaker 2: an hour before dark and see if you can lay
Speaker 2: eyes on any deer. Do the stuff that gets you
Speaker 2: out there and you'll gain valuable deer hunting experience. Do that,
Speaker 2: you'll get better and come back next week because I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about Christmas and how it relates to
Speaker 2: hunting gear. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. I want to
Speaker 2: thank you so much for all your support. We're just
Speaker 2: about to wrap this year up and truly, honestly, without question,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be able to do any of this without you,
Speaker 2: So thank you for that. Your support means the world
Speaker 2: to us. If you need some more hunting content, you know,
Speaker 2: and maybe you want to read a few articles, find
Speaker 2: a recipe to cook something up for Christmas dinner. Or
Speaker 2: New Year's Maybe a appetizer or something on New Year's Eve.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe you just need to listen to
Speaker 2: some new podcasts, or you want to watch a few
Speaker 2: hunting shows like the episode we just dropped where I
Speaker 2: hunted Bear and Dear with my daughter. You can go
Speaker 2: to them meat eater dot com and check it out.
Speaker 2: So much good content there. Go there, and again, thank
Speaker 2: you for everything.